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Comment by sfw1k | Hacker News Reader

  some coders that don't get too critical about their job

Couldn't be farther from the truth.

As someone who works there I've noticed this general trend of animosity towards Google, it seems to be fueled by the fact that people feel a sort of inferiority complex when they don't clear an interview or they feel they wouldn't be able to crack it if they ever gave it a shot, this leads to an overcompensation of attitude in the other direction, a sort of "sour grapes" narrative where there is an effort to downplay the prospects of working at Google or ridicule the people working there like you did just now.

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A lot of people are sour at FB/Google simply because how the companies represent themselves to the users. I can't look at Google/FB without bringing up gmail, maps, search etc. and their utmost desire to track every nanosecond of my life, and understand me better than I do... just to earn money from me. I couldn't care less about hiring processes there, since where I live they don't pay more than other businesses, and everybody knows how 'great' their hiring experience is.

With ie banks, they are at least honest about how they earn from customers like me and I don't have any unreasonable moral expectations.

My comment wasn't trying to ridicule anyone, but explain that big companies with an extremely large amount of coders need a very specific type of heads down personalities. As can be seen in this whole thread, plenty of people simply don't have a desire to work at big FANG companies, and even less desire to study multiple days//weeks for an interview that doesn't really help their day to day job.

>it seems to be fueled by the fact that people feel a sort of inferiority complex when they don't clear an interview or they feel they wouldn't be able to crack it if they ever gave it a shot

Some of the most talented people I've ever met have failed Google interviews. As in far, far more talented than the majority of folks I know who do work at google. No amount of bullshitting is going to convince me that Google's False Negative interviewing system is the correct one. It simply bypasses too many talented candidates even beyond the reasons generally mentioned above.

One guy in particular I know is now a CEO of a company which, ironically enough, employs several former googlers. Yes, I know Google doesn't give a shit they missed on this individual. But to mis-characterize the anti-Google-interview narrative as "sour grapes" sounds a bit like you're drinking their champagne.

I've met my share of Googlers who are lazy, don't know how to solve problems (as opposed to write code itself), or still need help with basic tasks after several years on the job.

You just can't test for some qualities like focused, persistent problem solving and the desire to find ways to speed up your work.

I think it's possible for both things to be true at the same time. Yes it's a selective meritocracy, and it's also true that the process unnecessarily alienates people. It comes down to recruiters being given the very difficult task of finding candidates for a process with such a high rejection rate, and the added stress of being given very specific rules about the things you can't be transparent about. The overwhelming majority of job seekers are mature adults who can handle rejection and constructive negative feedback. It's the sense of having wasted one's time that generates the "sour grapes" feeling.

There is also the general attitude of Googlers//Facebookers that brag a bit too much about working at Google//Facebook as if it was the dream that everyone was looking for.

There is nothing more annoying than discussing with a Googler that tries to convince you that you should apply and work for Google.

I have no idea whether I could study hard enough to work at Google. What I do know is that I don’t like large companies and I have no desire to move to the west coast.

> What I do know is that I don’t like large companies

I think this is a key thing to learn about oneself. Very large companies often have a lot of cachet and can provide opportunities that small companies cannot (scale is scale, after all).

But small companies (not even start-ups, just companies with < 100 employees) can provide a different kind of opportunities:

* Interaction with different parts of the business

* Opportunity to wear multiple hats

* Less likely to be in the Bay area

* Nowhere to hide incompetence

Of course this isn't every small company, but I have worked in a few that were like this.

It is all of that and while after 20+ years developing professionally and developing as a hobbyist since middle school, I’ve never felt burnt out from continuously learning. But,I was burned out by big company politics and bureaucracy after only three when I was worked at a large Fortune 10 (non tech) company.

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